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Dominoes

by Cathal O'Connell © 2007

 

The worst Christmas present Michael ever got was from his grandmother, Nana Sweeney, when he was eleven years old. She was his mother's mother and she gave him Rosary Beads. He'd just received a set of dominoes from his parents, which was bad enough, but the beads were positively insulting.  As he opened that silky blue box, all the magic of Christmas crumbled around him. Of course, this happened before he'd learned the finer points of social tact, and so when his grandmother handed him this ugly girl's thing, this jewelry , he began to cry.  It seemed to break her fragile little heart, when he did that.

He might have gone too far when he threw the box into the fire -fortunately his Dad was on hand with his favourite pair of tongs- but he definitely crossed the line when he screamed back “I hate you!” to Nana Sweeney's poor grey face as he ran bawling up the stairs. She was never the same towards him again.

”Problem child;” that's what they called him. Those two words floated up the stairs and into his room as he lay underneath the covers, hugging his tear soaked pillow. He was angry more than anything.  She's so stupid, he shouted inside his head.  So stupid!  But he wanted to call her something else, something worse.  The words swam about underneath, but never broached the surface.  Something stopped him, some fear of his parents or of God Himself.  Bitch! He wanted to scream it.  You stupid bitch!  But he never did. 

“Problem child;” spoken in serious tones, but only during the quiet parts between the shouting. He couldn't understand it really. He meant well most of the time, things just had a way of disintegrating around him, like the time he tried to cook his parents breakfast in bed. They didn't eat it, even after his Dad had put out the fire. Michael didn't mind too much being grounded for that, he probably deserved it after all. It was only when his Mam emptied the two plates of perfectly good fried egg into the bin that he became upset. They didn't even let him explain that it was for them.

***

A couple of days after Christmas his mother called him over to have a "talk". He'd been playing with the dominoes in the kitchen. They weren't that bad a toy after all, if you set them up right. On the stairs was best. It was two dominoes per stair, and he measured the distances with his ruler. He loved that first fragile domino. There was so much responsibility on its shoulders. It was unfair, really. Just the tiniest movement would send it rattling into all of its brothers. He would position everything perfectly and then jump around beside it so that even he didn't know when it would go. Even the most innocent noise could make it fall. He imagined that very first domino struggling to remain upright, trying desperately not to fall and knock down the rest. It was the most important one, and if it could stay standing, then the rest would too.  It never did.  And they could do a fair bit of damage to any toy soldiers straying near the end of the stairs.

By now he'd already been made apologize to Nana Sweeney and his Mam only wanted to explain the Rosary beads. She told him that for each small bead on the chain you were supposed to say one full Hail Mary, and for each large bead you were supposed to say an Our Father. There were many more small beads than big beads. He was glad about this; Hail Marys were much better than Our Fathers.

“Now, Michael, these beads are very special Holy things,” she said as she placed them over his head. “When you say the Rosary, you are talking directly to God Himself.”

He looked down at the beads draped around his neck, examining them properly for the  first time. They really were rather pretty, after all. He took the dainty little cross in his hand and felt the smoothness of its wood. There was a tiny carving of Jesus that he hadn't noticed before. He loved the  way it was slightly blackened from the fire.

“And He really hears it?”

“Of course He does! It is the prayer He likes best of all,” she smiled down at him “and He will reward you with the Holy Spirit whenever you say it.”

He furrowed his eyebrows for a moment. “But…does He not get bored? With loads of people saying the same stuff to Him over and over?"

“No, of course not! God doesn't get bored, don't talk silly.”

“Well if I  had millions of people saying the same stuff to me every day and I had to listen to them, I would be bo -ored! ” He took off the  beads and threw them on the table, already looking for his football. “Yeah, I'd sure hate to be God.”

She grounded him for three days for saying that. He didn't even know what he'd done wrong, not until later. There was a fight in the kitchen when his Dad came home. It was night-time and they thought he was asleep. His Dad was saying he shouldn't be grounded, that he was a child and that he “didn't understand.” Someone slammed the front door after a while, and left up the gravel driveway with heavy steps. Afterwards Michael could hear quiet sobbing coming from the kitchen. He knew it had to be his Mam, but she didn't sound right. She sounded just like a child. He lay there with his head buried under the pillow and asked God to make her stop. Then He apologised for what he'd said earlier. It was all his fault, after all.

He hated when people told him he “wouldn't understand.” It made him want to kick them in the knee. He usually kept annoying them until eventually they explained it to him, whatever it was. Most of the time it was very boring stuff about the government or something, but he always stayed listening until they were finished, and he always nodded at the end to let them know he'd understood every word, even when he hadn't. His Dad always laughed when he nodded at the end, and even his Mam did too, sometimes. Though you could tell she was trying not to.

***

He said the Rosary the next day, just to try it out. It took him twenty-two minutes exactly, and he was praying as fast as he could. He assumed he'd made a mistake because nothing happened afterwards. He didn't feel any Holier or anything. It wasn't really his fault though, because during the last few prayers his Mam kept shouting up to him to come to dinner. She made him drop the beads and he lost his place. He had to guess how many more Hail Marys to say. But he said an extra one at the end, just to be sure.

***

For a New Years Resolution he promised to be good, all of the time. He did it for his parents, and somehow, it worked. Whenever he thought of something fun to do he just thought about whether they would like it or not, and if not, he played something else. It was hard work, but it was worth it. He did nothing wrong for three whole months, except for one thing in school, and that wasn't even his fault. His Mam started calling him her “good little boy.” He liked it most of the time, but not when she rubbed his head and messed up his hair.

After a while he was told that it was nearly Lent and that he had to give something up for forty days as a sacrifice. “Sweets and fizzy drinks,” his Mam said, “and promise to say extra prayers every night.” His Dad was giving up booze, or at least that's what he shouted one night between bottles, each one his last and a toast to “Almighty Jesus”. He didn't know what his Mam was going without, although that same night he heard her say “I wish I could give you up” to his Dad under her breath. Michael thought that was very funny, and she smiled at him as he laughed and then shooed him out of the room.

He decided to give up bad words. He was notorious in the neighborhood for his swearing. Eff this, effing that, “b”-words, “c”-words, “s” words; he knew them all and not the full meaning of any of them. He fired them around the streets of Clontarf like bullets. No-one was safe, save his own family, well none of the children anyway. He had a little group of kids that were so awed by his eloquence that they followed him around and laughed at whatever he said, even at stuff he didn't mean to be funny. That made him feel bad, whenever he said something serious and they laughed anyway. It hurt deep down. He enjoyed having them around though. It was great to walk somewhere and know that people would follow. He called them his Disciples, but he never let his mother hear that.

He was determined to continue his good behavior for his parent's sake. Even though they weren't aware of his foul mouth, it was the only thing that might still cause trouble. So, two days before Lent he tested himself. He woke up early and made an oath not to swear at all that day. It lasted about four hours. After a full morning out with the Disciples -throwing pebbles at cars on Kincora Road- he was stuttering and biting his tongue at every sentence. Eventually he simply exploded with a tirade of verbal abuse much greater than usual. The kid he shouted at actually cried and the rest of them sang “Cheerio! Cheerio! Cheerio!” as he ran off home. It was great. There was no excuse for tears in the Disciples. They were the men amongst boys.

But the relief! It was like not going to the toilet for ages, and then finally unleashing a crashing torrent; the best feeling in the world. It felt like he had a reservoir of bad words inside of him and if he tried to hold them all in, eventually the dam would burst. He knew that he had little chance to survive forty days. The way he saw it, his only option was to empty the reservoir before Lent began, and get the words out of his system altogether. So he came up with a Plan.

***

First he tried to find out the amount of curse-words he used each day. That was hard. He had to get his Disciples to count them for him, and none of them were exactly smart for their age. It was frustrating when they kept losing count. Eventually the whole thing descended into a kind of game with him shouting random dirty words and the group of kids around him yelling out numbers and cheering. In the end he just made a guess at one hundred, mostly because it was a nice round number and easy to multiply.

He was the best in his class at multiplication. They had a test and he got 100%; every answer right. The teacher didn't believe him though. She thought that he'd cheated. She rang home to his parents and everything and they had to come in to school for a meeting. His mother wanted to punish him. She and Mrs. McMahon, the teacher, were part of the same church group. His Dad didn't let them though, he was great. He made the teacher give him another test and he got 100% in that too. The next day Mrs. McMahon moved him to the back of the class and told him “I don't want to hear from you at all today,” so he just went to sleep.

He made a list of all of the dirty words that he knew. There were seven. Forty multiplied by one hundred was four thousand. So he knew he had to say four thousand swear words altogether, but finding out how many of each curse he had to say was harder. They hadn't done division yet. His friend Paul had an older brother in big school. Michael told him about the plan and the older boy advised him to say each word five hundred times. He said the idea was “hilarious”. The boy even taught him another bad word that he hadn't heard before. He started using it immediately.

***

The day before the start of Lent was pancake Tuesday. Michael was being so good lately that his Mam let him flip one all by himself. The frying pan was too big though and he dropped the pancake onto the kitchen floor, and just stood there looking down at it, nearly crying. He hated to waste food. She said it was alright though, and that she was proud of him for trying. She just cleaned it off and they ate it together. It was tasty after all. Nana Sweeney didn't have any of it, though. She had started her Lent a week early and was fasting from any nice tasting foods, amongst other things. His Dad didn't have any either. They could hear his laughter from the other room. He was in there with the TV and some beers. Only a couple though; he was working the next day.

After pancakes Michael went in to his room to execute the plan. He brought a glass of water with him in case he got thirsty after the first couple of thousand curses. Before he started he had to fetch one thing out of his drawer; his set of Rosary Beads.

His Mam had said that the beads weren't really necessary to say the Rosary, that they were just a tool to help count the number of prayers. He dug them out of his drawer and sat back down on his bed. There were fifty small beads. Paul's brother told him he needed to say each curse ten times for every small bead on the Rosary and then he would be done. Simple. It was just past his bedtime so he put on his pajamas first and then began.

It took ages, nearly as long as the Rosary itself.  Near the end he was getting sleepy and the beads were slipping through his fingers.  It was strangely soothing.  When he got into it the chant became automatic, and the words themselves seemed to lose all meaning.  That little thrill he always felt when he swore just seemed to fade a little with every curse.  Swear-words were just words after all, he realised.  The plan was working.

He was finishing off his very last swear-word when Nana Sweeney walked in on him and broke his concentration. She must have been wondering why his light was on when he was supposed to be asleep. The way he was sitting, he was facing the door and had the Rosary held up in front of his face as he fingered the beads. His eyes were closed by now as he was in such a trance, so he didn't even see her come in. She should really have knocked.

“…Bitch. Bitch. Bitch. Bitch-” he said.

“Michael...!” she almost screamed.

His eyes shot open, and he dropped the beads on to the floor. She gave him a shock actually, so that he nearly fell off the bed. When he'd righted himself he saw her standing in the doorway, mouth agape and eyes wide. He could see her lips moving, but there was no sound coming out. He don't know if she thought he was insulting her or God, or the Virgin Mary Herself but he could see that she was upset, more upset than she'd ever been before.

Feet thundered on the stairs. It was his parents.

“What's going on up here?”

Nana Sweeney was still staring at him and her eyes were dark. Slowly she raised a shaking finger and whispered hoarsely, and with frightening vehemence, as she pointed squarely at him, “Devil-child.”

She said it again, louder, “Devil-child!”

His Mam stormed right over, and grabbed his arm so tight it hurt. Her voice was a shout, and her face was scary.

“What d'you do? What d'you do this time?”

She squeezed his arm even tighter so that his arm bruised green and yellow afterwards. Tears welled quietly in his eyes. He tried to explain everything, that he was trying to be good, that he was doing it for her and Dad, but his brain wouldn't work properly, or his mouth. In the end he just sat there on the bed, staring up at his mother's grim face as tears dribbled down his cheeks.

Then his Dad came up beside her, and tried to soothe her. He put his hand on her shoulder and everything. He was great.

“Mary, please. It's all right, calm down. We don't even know what happened here.”

“Will you just look at her? He must have done something!  Something terrible.”

“It's probably nothing," his Dad said, before whispering. "You know your mother, she sees the Devil in her soup for Chrissake.”

It was then that it all happened.

First, Nana Sweeney fainted. That was weird, her legs just sort of crumpled beneath her and it made a sound like when you throw a pair of jeans on the floor. Then his Mam screamed.

“O my God!”

She turned quickly to go to help Nana, but she must have forgotten that she had a hold of his arm. She spun round and automatically let go. He was sitting on the end of the bed, and it was enough to throw him. He went over head first, and backwards. It wasn't really her fault though. She just forgot.

He caught a glimpse of his Dad as he fell; his eyes fixed upon him and wide, his mouth open, his arms extending to catch him. Automatically he tried to reach for him too. Then he rotated and his Dad disappeared.

He had a chest of drawers beside his bed, and the bottom drawer was open. It was made of some kind of hardwood, and the corners were sharp. That was where he had kept his Rosary beads. The drawer was practically on the floor so his Mam never used it. She thought it was empty. He kept some old t-shirts in there anyway to cover everything up, in case she glanced in. That was where he kept all the stupid little things that he liked, like the cartoons his Dad cut out of the paper for him every week, and the interesting stones that he found when they went to the beach, and the little teddy from when he was small that he had to hide from his Mam so she didn't throw it out, and the will that he'd written leaving his toys and stuff to the Disciples because they all promised to, and the huge dead bee that he found on the kitchen windowsill until it started scaring him at night and he had to throw it out the window.

His head landed an inch away from the drawer's hardwood corner. The room was carpeted so it didn't really hurt that bad, but everything went kind of blurry anyway. He stared up to see the utter fear on his parents' faces. They towered above him.

His Dad turned to her then, and his expression changed entirely. Suddenly he seemed huge, much bigger than her, bigger than the room itself, and loud like a machine; like that empty cargo train that thundered past the school at break time, just on the other side of the tall wire fence.

“ You stupid bitch !” he said, and then he hit her.

The slap was piercing. The sound seemed to reverberate around the room for long afterwards, echoing and reminding, and shaking the walls of the house like an earthquake in the air. Michael gasped and suddenly felt sick, but still he watched silently.

She was knocked over and lay above him on the bed, holding her face in her hands. The red hand print didn't fade for hours. She made no sound. His Dad was stunned more than anything. He stood there for what seemed like ages, just staring down at her, and saying nothing. He kept glancing down at his right hand, as if the hand itself was to blame, as if it was not a part of his own body, and he could be angry at it for what it had done, and punish it as it deserved to be.

For some reason his Dad turned off the light as he left, and so the last image Michael had of him for several weeks was his darkened silhouette as he stepped over his fainted grandmother in the doorway.

Nothing happened for a very long time. He lay there flat out on the floor beside his bed, listening to his mother's sniffling breath in the dark and Nana Sweeney's even breathing behind it.  He waited for something to happen. He'd landed on top of the Rosary beads and could feel them digging into his back, so he took them out and held them in shaking hands, fingering the shape of the little Christ figure that he'd blackened in the fire. He spoke to Him then and apologized for the fire, amongst other things. He lay there feet from his mother and grandmother, the three of them fallen bodies; a family of dominoes knocked down by one another and held to the floor without giant hands to pick them up. He lay there and remembered that first fragile domino, and how it was always destined to fall, and how cruel that really was.  He lay there and realised all of the force that must be upon it still, even after it had fallen.  How it was now lying on top of all of its brothers, and how none of them could get up until it did first.  And how hard that must be– to get up first.  He lay there listening to his mother's breathing for a long time, until he had to stretch open his eyes wide and painful to stop from falling asleep. He lay there and said the Rosary into the darkness and prayed for God to forgive him.

But he was careful not to make a sound.

 

  Cathal O'Connell lives in Dublin, Ireland where he studies science with a passionate reluctance. He has been writing for nearly two years and is a member of several online writer's communities including Writer's Dock and Critters Bar. This is his first publication.